Posts tagged ‘Tenje’

Stanczyk, was not intending to write a blog post today. I hope Genealogy Moms are having a wonderful day today … too.

Yesterday, I was researching on FamilySearch.org. On a lark, I thought I would look at Croatia. In particular at Tenje. I did that because my maternal grandmother, Roza Göttler (aka Gottler/Goettler/Gettler). From her ship manifest, I knew her to come from Tenje (which was Austria-Hungary, then Jugoslavia, now presently Croatia). This explains the ever changing ethnicity throughout the US Federal Censuses. I did indeed find Gottlers in Tenje. I did not find my grandmother’s parents or my grandmother … unfortunately the years available online would not meet my needs. But something unusual happened. I found other affiliated family names: Eisenbeiser and Elter. So I am now convinced that Tenje (the Roman Catholic records) is where I will find my maternal grandmother.

That was so uplifting, on a lark, I thought I’d search for my maternal grandfather’s village. His was a bit of a problem too. Differing country names (like Roza Gottler), but his village name changed often too, so even though I had ship manifest, Declaration of Intent, and finally a Petition for Naturalization, I was still uncertain where he was from. I was pretty sure he was from the same area as Roza Gottler. My paternal grandparents were both married once, before they married each other and had my mother. So my grandfather emmigrated alone and my grandmother emmigrated with her first husband (John Reiner). Over the years, I developed many clues which I collected even though they did not fit together. This weekend, the clues came together! These stray clues allowed me to verify that the records I was viewing were my own family. What a gift on Mother’s Day weekend. I found both of her family parents’ families this weekend!

It turns out that my grandfather was born in Sarvas (now in Croatia) and in the same district as Tenje. So all those sources: Sawas is from Ship Manifest , then Storvish is from Declaration of Intent, and Dowash is from the Petition for Naturalization. The first Vespek birth record I found spelled the village as Starvas. These are all the same place! Some were slightly misspelled. Now I can see it. So in the same FamilySearch project in two different villages I found my maternal lines. Some direct lines, some indirect branches, others are affiliated families.

So I have set a fairly high level of confidence in these findings. As such, I believe I have found my Great-Grandfather Vendelin Vespek’s birth record. This is not 100% certain and I have to find 1 or 2 missing pieces to make it a 100% certain. For those who are second (or 3rd) cousins researching in the Vespek family tree pay attention to the remainder and download the image at the top.

Even though most of the records are in Latin, there are still records in Croatian.So for my Polish genealogy researchers, I would hasten a tip. As I was doing this I saw month names that were close to month names for Polish. Croatian is a Slavic language (albeit Southern Slav). So when I saw LISTOPAD (Croatian), I was immediately thinking NOVEMBER (in English), because LISTOPAD in Polish = November in English. But in Croatian, LISTOPAD = October. Surprise!